


I love you (enough to let you go)

by Florchis



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Feels, Coping, Emotional Hurt, Established Relationship, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, MCD is Robbie's just as in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 01:32:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17356454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florchis/pseuds/Florchis
Summary: Every so often, Daisy has trouble sleeping ever since Robbie... left. This time, it is him calling to tell her an important truth.





	I love you (enough to let you go)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whistlingwindtree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whistlingwindtree/gifts).



> @Fierysky asked me to write some Quakerider, in exchange of... honestly, I can't even recall what she promised me, but I don't mind.
> 
> I told her that I got an idea based on a Sleeping at Last song, so chances were 110% of it being heartbreaking. Her- literal- reply was, "The quakerider fandom has angst goblins who would eat that heartbreak up with a spoon!", so here you have this.

_**We were always meant to say goodbye** _

* * *

She wakes up because her bed is shaking.

She has to use every trick May ever taught her to stop herself from punching a hole through the wall. Instead, she stays in bed, closes her eyes and tries to focus on her breathing.

In, out.

In, out.

It doesn’t work, her heart rate is racing out of control, and she knows that if she stays still it will calm down on its own, but nobody got the time for that.

She sits on the bed, her feet seaching for her slippers out of instinct. She can’t find them, but the floor of the base is cold on her feet, and that is good. She looks down at her hands, and they are shaking, too.

_ Goddamnit. _

* * *

Navigating through the base in the dark had become a second skin for her. She learned how to do it during the dark times when she was avoiding Simmons or Fitz, sometimes both, and Coulson was avoiding her. Oh, what she would give to be back at that time.

Would it be better, though? Maybe if she stays frozen in time, with no moving forward, at that time where she was still unaware of all the tragedies that were looming on their backs. They were unaware of the future, but they also were all suffering, Fitz with his aphasia, Simmons with her guilt, May with her burden, Coulson with his illness, Mack with his secrets. Who is she to decide if the suffering of the past was better than the suffering of the present? The past is always better left like that, in the past.

If only she could take her own advice.

She hesitates when she reaches the main hallway; she knows her friends are always there for her, that May willingly would open up her door and spar with her no matter the hour; that Fitzsimmons would make tea and open up one of Fitz’s secret stashes of candy and cuddle with her on a couch; that Mack would play video games with her till their fingers go numb and don’t force her to talk before she is ready. But just as they were suffering in the past, they are suffering now, always, and who is she to perturb their peaceful rest?

She turns around on her feet and goes to the kitchen.  

 

* * *

Daisy understands why she had been having nightmares and why she dismissed so easily the idea of going to her friends when she reaches the kitchen and sees Robbie sitting at the aisle, two steaming mugs of black coffee in front of him.

Daisy does not believe in fate- it would fuck her up to do so-, but she does believe in her guts instincts- she would have been fucked up many times without them-, and her gut instincts were driving her to him.

She could run to him, pepper his face with kisses, fall at his feet in crying, but she does not. The fact that Robbie is waiting for her, here and with coffee, tells her that this doesn’t mean he is back for good, or even for any good expanse of time: it means he is back to talk, and even more, that she won’t be liking the topic of the chat.

_ Well, fuck. _

Still, it is good to see his face, all the little gestures that she has been trying to preserve in her memory but were starting to dissolve in the vacuity of day to day life. On the start, when she first met them, each time she looked at Gabe she would find a new way in which he was similar to his brother; now, looking at Robbie, she goes  _ ah, I have seen that particular smile on Gabe’s mouth, _ and how fucked up is that?

“So now we can’t even catch a good night of sleep around here, hmm?”

She sits down on the stool next to his, and his hand finds hers in between their legs. Daisy keeps waiting for him to ghost- ha!- right through her flesh, but no, he is solid and warm against her palm, the pad of his thumb drawing indulgent circles around her wrist. She draws in a sharp intake of breath and looks at him, his sad eyes and his long eyeshadows driving her own eyes to the verge of tears. 

But there will be no crying tonight. She had done enough of that on her own during the last few weeks- months, years-, and she will make every second of this one-of-a-kind opportunity count.

“Have you been having trouble sleeping, mi vida?”

It is a bit cruel on his part to call her “my life” when, well, there is not much of that to go around. 

She shakes her head, but the words for an excuse don’t come to her lips, so she ends up just shrugging. Robbie frowns at that, and his hold on her wrist tightens a bit; he is now holding her hand hard enough to leave a bruise, and that is good. It means she won’t have to debate if she dreamt the whole thing tomorrow morning.

“Would it be too sappy to say that I got used to sleeping next to you?”

His mouth hardens, that thing he does when he is trying to hold in tears, and for some reason, he uses his checks instead of his eyes for that. Fuck, she decided she won’t be crying tonight, and he is making it so damned hard. 

“Daisy-”

“No, I have been sleeping just fine,” she rushes to stop him. “That was out of line, and I am sorry.”

One of the corners of his mouth ticks up, and  _ okay, that is good. Now you only have to fucking breath and get your heart under control. _

“Ever since does Daisy Johnson apologize for being out of line?”

There are a lot of things she could say to him.  _ You are right, I don’t. Only with you. Let’s stop fucking around and let’s go fuck, period.  _ Instead, she says, “What are you doing here, Robbie?”

He shifts his weight on his stool, and though his expression lasts only one second, Daisy can read on it everything she already suspected: every second here is one second he has to pay for, at a price she doesn’t deserve.

“Directo a la yugular, ¿no? You don’t mess around, babe.”

She moves her hand away from his hold and takes the mug closer to her. She doesn’t want him to realize that her hands are shaking.

“You know I don’t.”

He nods, once, curt, and Daisy leaves the mug back on the table without having taken even a sip; the smell of the coffee is too strong, and she wants to take his smell of leather and car grease back to bed with her when he leaves.

“And you know I like that about you. No bullshit.” 

She quirks an eyebrow at him, “You are pretty no-nonsense yourself, Robbie.”

“You are right I am.” He inhales deep, once, and Daisy feels a weight settling in her stomach; what can be hard to say for the man who goes to bed, literally, with a demon? “I need you to let me go.”

She blinks, and blinks, and blinks, and yet he doesn’t say anything else, and a dense ball of rage and unprocessed grief goes up Daisy’s throat.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Roberto?” He winces at hearing his full name, and that only spurs her further. “You didn’t ask me when you decided to sacrifice yourself to the Rider, which means you don’t get  _ a fucking say  _ on what the ones left behind do to cope with it!”

She swears, if after this he has the  _ nerve _ to ask her to tell Gabe to cheer up and keep going on with life, she will flip the table at him. And possibly the walls down too.

“Daisy.”

“It’s easy for you, isn’t it? To say ‘just forget about me and move on’, when you are not the one that needs to do the fucking  _ work  _ to move on.”

“Daisy.”

“Well, newsflash, I don’t want to move on! I want you to come back and hold me at night and bicker with me and teach me dirty phrases in spanish and take my van on a road trip to the coast!  _ You  _ want me to let you go? Too bad, because  _ I  _ want you back!”  

“Daisy.”                  

Only then Daisy realizes that she has broken her own promise: there are tears running down her cheeks, and her entire body is shaking, and their coffee mugs are shaking. Fuck, she can not be losing control over her powers this easily. Robbie is now standing, holding both her hands palm down against her thighs, and looking at her with heartbroken eyes.

She  opens her mouth to say something, but a strangled sound comes out, and she closes it back. She can’t even discuss with him properly now, for fuck’s sake.

“Amor, look at me.” It is like she has gone backward into a child and doing the exact opposite of what he is asking of her, because her eyes are glued to her hands, despite the urgency of the hand he is using to hold her jaw. “Daisy, please. Don’t make this harder than it already is.”

She bites down another sour quip, and tries to respect the fact that it must be costing him a literal eye to be here with her. She looks up, trying to keep her eyes hard, but it’s difficult when he is wearing his trademark kicked puppy look.

“What?” she tries to bark, but it comes out more like a plead.

Robbie draws her face closer until their foreheads are touching, and mad at him or not, her heart starts to beat faster and faster. It has been so long since she had had him so close.

“I know you have been dreaming about me. Holding onto hope. But I am not coming back.” She draws in a sharp intake of breath, but Robbie’s fingers on the nape of her neck don’t let her retreat and hide. “That is a fact. The sooner you learn how to live with that fact, the better it will be for you.”

“You are here now,” is the first thing that comes out of her lips, because the burning that means she is trying too hard to not cry again is taking claim of the bigger part of her brain.

“I know.” One of the corners of his mouth tick up, and her hand goes up of its own accord to stroke his cheek. “I couldn’t imagine not seeing you one last time, chica.”

Daisy nods, once, and that makes this all feel a lot more real than anything else he has already said. It all feels like he is pouring her entire respiratory system with liquid lead, and she can not make him any promises she won’t be able to fulfill. Instead, eyes already wet, she leans closer and kisses him, her hands holding his face tight. 

His mouth is soft against hers, and his hands under her ribs so light that she almost doesn’t feel them at all.

When she opens her eyes again, he is already gone, and he didn’t even get to drink his damn coffee.   

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of LLF Comment Project, whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Prompts
>   * Image reactions
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> This author replies to comments (but it might take a while). If you'd rather not get a reply, please add *whispers* to your comment.



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